Deans of CHS/SOP
College of Health Sciences
Dr. Stacy Wagovich is the interim dean of the College of Health Sciences. Prior to her appointment as interim dean, Dr. Wagovich served the College as associate dean for academic and faculty affairs. She is a professor in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences.
Dr. Wagovich’s primary area of expertise is in childhood fluency disorders and the interactions between language, cognitive factors, and fluency across populations. She has also explored the development of partial word knowledge in children with developmental language disorders. Her current projects focus on mental state verb use in early childhood, as well as the facilitation of expository discourse skills in children with and without developmental language disorders. Many of Dr. Wagovich’s studies have employed language samples, as an ecologically valid way to characterize children’s expressive language. Through language sample analysis, her group explores not only children’s language skills but disfluencies or speech disruptions, as an index of cognitive, linguistic, or motor challenges that children face.
Prior to coming to UTEP, Dr. Wagovich was a department chair and associate professor in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at the University of Missouri.
School of Pharmacy
Dr. José O. Rivera, PharmD, founding dean of the new School of Pharmacy (SOP) at UTEP, is a highly qualified leader in pharmacy education and practice, with over 35 years of both pharmacy practice and pharmacy education experience. Prior to his appointment as founding dean in 2015, Dr. Rivera was the director of the UTEP Cooperative Pharmacy Program (CPP) with UT Austin.
Dr. Rivera completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacy at the Universidad de Puerto Rico in 1976, a Doctor of Pharmacy degree in 1979 at the University of Kentucky, and a clinical pharmacy residency at the University of Kentucky Medical Center. He subsequently held assistant professor positions at the University of Cincinnati College of Pharmacy, the University of New Mexico College of Pharmacy, and The University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy, as well as a clinical associate professor and clinical professor positions with the UTEP CPP. He has also held adjunct faculty positions with Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso since 2001.
Dr. Rivera has made a number of notable scientific contributions in the areas of cultural competency, alternative herbal treatments, antibiotic resistance, and the pharmacotherapy of infectious diseases, and has been awarded numerous grants for research on effective medication management and health literacy. Additionally, Dr. Rivera has been the UTEP project investigator for a grant program from the U.S. Health Resources Services Administration supporting the UT Austin College of Pharmacy Hispanic Center of Excellence. Dr. Rivera’s contributions to research have been recognized by the UTEP Center for Hispanic Entrepreneurship and the UTEP Faculty Research Award.